The Magic of the State

by Michael Taussig

Overview

Set in the enchanted mountain of a spirit-queen presiding over an unnamed, postcolonial country, this ethnographic work of ficto-criticism recreates in written form the shrines by which the dead—notably the fetishized forms of Europe's Others, Indians and Blacks—generate the magical powers of the modern state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415917902
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/21/1997
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael Taussig teaches in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University. He is the author, most recently, of The Nervous System and Mimesis and Alterity, both published by Routledge.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The Spirit Queen’s Court; Chapter 1 The Spirit Queen; Chapter 2 The Mountain; Chapter 3 The Shrines; Chapter 4 Waiting for Ofelia; Chapter 5 Billy the Kid and the Break-Through Economy; Chapter 6 Holy Torpor; Chapter 7 Mimesis Unto Death; Chapter 8 Spiritual Treachery; Part 2 The liberator’s Court; Chapter 9 The Infinite Melancholy; Chapter 10 Mucoid Ignominy State-Making as Spirit Possession; Chapter 11 Kitsch is Where Fear Locks with the Mute Absurd; Chapter 12 The Accursed Share; Chapter 13 Money and Spirit Possession in Karl Marx; Chapter 14 Art Adrift in the Passing Crowd Floating Wave-Like on a Freeway; Chapter 15 Faith in Marble; Part 3 The Theater of Divine Justice; Chapter 16 Adventures in Musculature Taximetry and Dada Cinema; Chapter 17 Stealing the Sword; Chapter 18 Pilgrimage as Method;

Editorial Reviews

"Taussig offer[s] much of value for us to think about." — Religious Studies Review
"The clear allusions to the South American local of Taussig's fieldwork and the spooky accompanying photographs and drawings give the whole an errie verisimilitude. He seems to be saying, "You think this is fantasy, but it is and is not." Taussig's style of truthtelling roams in the fantasists privileged territory." — American Journal of Sociology

From the Publisher